Earning Bitcoins and More | The Best Ways to Earn Digital Currency
Many people believe that digital currency is the future of money, and even amongst those who don't there is a growing realization that there will be a long term place for these virtual coins to use when paying for things over the internet or transferring money to people in other countries.
There are a range of benefits to using Bitcoin and other digital currencies. The fact that they offer lower transaction fees for merchants in comparison to credit cards or Paypal means that some stores are willing to pass the savings on to customers in the form of discounts. You can transfer money to anybody, anywhere in the world without paying the high prices associated with international bank transfers or traditional money transfer services. You can also have complete control over your money, storing it on your own computer or phone rather than having to trust a bank or other financial organisation (no fear of failing banks, or Cyprus style 'bank levies' forcing you to pay for the mistakes of highly paid bankers).
If you believe that a digital currency will grow in popularity, owning it might also be seen as a good investment. This is because the supply of these currencies is limited, usually with a fixed maximum which can ever be created, so if demand grows due to more people wanting to use the currency, then its value will rise. In fact, lost coins and small transaction fees mean that many people expect the value to rise over the long term even if the number of users remain level - this means that just like regular money is 'inflationary', losing some of its value each year as prices continue to rise, digital currency is seen as 'deflationary', gaining value every year instead,
But not everybody has the money to purchase the Bitcoins or other digital currencies that they would like to own. Even if you do have the money you might not want to risk it on such a new technology. One way around this is to earn your coins, rather than buying them. Fortunately there are now loads of different ways to earn digital currency - earning Bitcoins has never been easier!
Earn Bitcoins from Your Regular Job
You don't necessarily need to do anything different to what you are doing now in order to start earning Bitcoins. Various services have started popping up which allow employees to start getting their wages in digital rather than fiat currency. I've listed a couple of notable examples below, or just ask your boss!
Get Paid In Bitcoin: This Australian company will take receipt of your regular wages and convert as much or as little as you want in Bitcoin,
Wagepoint: This Canadian human resources management company offers to pay employees part or all of their wages in Bitcoin at no charge. You will have to talk to your boss though, as it is a service that the company itself must set up.
If you know of any similar services in other countries then please use the comment box at the bottom of the page to let me know and I will add them to this list.
New Hot Sale USB 144k Overclock to 220kH/s Asic Mining LTC Litecoin Miner, AN2
New Hot Sale USB 144k Overclock to 220kH/s Asic Mining LTC Litecoin Miner, AN2
Buy Now
Mining
Digital currencies like Bitcoin were designed to be earned by people who run the software which runs the network on their computer(s). This allows these coins to have a 'decentralized' organization, in which the infrastructure is run by users themselves rather than a central authority, and allows for a fairer and more constructive distribution of newly created currency units compared to giving them to banks to be introduced to the economy as debt - which is the method used by fiat currency. The process of running this software and being rewarded with newly generated coins is called 'mining'.
In the early days of Bitcoin this was done by people running the software on home computers. Today this has become uneconomical, as competition from people using specialist hardware means that you would spend more on electricity running a regular computer than you would get back from the generated coins. But that doesn't mean you can't get involved in mining if you are interested. You can pick up specialist mining hardware quite easily, the cheapest of which comes in the form of a small USB stick that you just need to plug in to a computer running the mining software. If you like playing with new gadgets, tweaking settings and figuring out how things work, then mining can be an enjoyable hobby as well as a way to earn a little extra pocket money in the form of digital currency.
Check out the eBay capsule to the right for an example of a low cost USB miner.
Alternatively, if you don't fancy having to set up the hardware yourself, pay for the electricity, and probably not get your money back for ages (if ever - as it depends on the price of Bitcoin which fluctuates quite a lot still) then you can give 'cloud mining' a try instead. Cloud mining basically means that you a share in a miner which is being run by a professional, allowing you to share in the financial advantages that come from economies of scale and also meaning that you don't have any of the hassle of actually running the hardware yourself.
Earning Bitcoins for Microjobs
There are loads of websites out there now which allow you to earn a small amount of Bitcoin for performing various tasks. This may include watching videos, visiting sponsor's websites, minor admin tasks, completing surveys, or taking up various partner offers.
I've also included revenue sharing websites which let you earn a small amount for doing things like posting pictures on an image sharing site, or publishing code snippets or other text, in this category. Check out the link list below!
BitcoinGet
Earn Bitcoins for completing small simple jobs or for watching videos.
I Want Free Bitcoins
Get paid for completing survey and partner offers. Includes a referral program which pays 25%.
Bitvisitor
Get paid a small amount for each website you visit.
BitImg
An image hosting site which shares its ad revenue with users in BTC.
BitBin
BitBin allows you to earn bitcoins simply by posting and sharing your text pastes
Find Real Jobs Paying in Bitcoins
If you are looking for a way to earn a bit more than the few pennies worth of digital currency you are likely to get from paid to surf programs or for completing surveys and offers, then you may want to check out one of the specialist jobs boards which have started to pop up. There are now quite a few companies out there looking for regular full time and part time employees who want to be paid in BTC. Many of these jobs will involve working for companies involved in digital currency in some way, but there are also other companies as well. There are lots of programming jobs and quite a few marketing jobs, but there are all sorts of other things too, so no matter what your profession is you may well be able to find an employer happy to pay you in Bitcoin.
Although I haven't actually tried to get a job like this, the one that looks the best to me is Coinality - they have lots of jobs covering a wide range of different positions and types of company, and the website is well designed and user-friendly.
There are also plenty of places to find businesses looking for temporary and freelance workers. Again you will find lots of technology jobs, especially companies looking for programmers, but there are also quite a few writing and marketing jobs, some translation work, and other stuff too. One of the most well-established sites for freelancers who want to get paid in BTC is BitTask.
Source: http://qoinpro.com/8eec1c05dc15e29d204c8a086fb4f1c...
Faucets - Get Digital Currencies for Free
On the other hand, perhaps you don't actually want to do any work - you actually just want to get your hands on some Bitcoin or other digital currency for free. Well don't worry - there are plenty of sites out there for you too!
You won't get a lot of money like this. In fact you'll get a really tiny amount. But there are loads of different websites that will let you claim a small amount of a digital currency every hour or day just for visiting the website. These sites make money from advertising to people visiting them to get their free coins, and they also get donations to replenish their funds. This is because digital currencies need users, so people with a vested interest in a currency (miners, investors, the people who created it) may decide that giving a small amount away for free to a lot of different people may actually make them money over the long term, if it means more people start using the coin and it therefore builds a higher value.
These free money websites are known as 'facuets'. Qoinpro, which I've included a banner for on the right, is my personal favourite as you just need to sign up for an account and they will give you a range of different digital currencies (including Bitcoin) for free every day without you even needing to go back to their site all the time.
Trading and Market Making
If you already own some digital currency then a popular way to try to earn more is through day trading and market making. If you have experience of any other kind of day trading, especially forex, then you will probably find that trading alt coins is basically the same. You can try to ride trends, perform technical analysis to get market insights, or base your trading decisions on the important news of the day.
Market making is when you post offers slightly off the market price, effectively 'making a market' which was too thin previously to satisfy the needs of regular users. The difference between the price you offer and the actual market price is the profit you make for providing this market making service.
My favourite site for trading is Cryptsy, but there are plenty of others to choose between.
Digital Currency Investments
If you have some money to invest, but you don't want to be sat at your computer all day analysing every little price movement, then there are plenty of options for you too. There are loads of sites around now where you can invest money - in either fiat money or digital currency - and take your profits in Bitcoin or some other alt coin. There are trading and mining funds, virtual shares, interest paying exchanges, and probably a lot more besides. I couldn't possibly list them all here, but I have included a few links for you to check out below:
Vircurex | Exchange and Trading Platform
This currency exchange platform and trading site pays a small amount of daily interest on all deposits over 1BTC.
Bitcoin Trader | Home
Bitcoin Trader offers a choice of investment funds - a mining fund and a trading fund.
Ripple Hedge Fund
The preferred Ripple Wealth Management Choice - investing funds in trading and market making for digital currency on the Ripple network.
Cryptostocks
Cryptostocks offers virtual stocks and shares traded in BTC, LTC and DVC.
Sell Stuff - Digital Currency Marketplaces
As the digital currency economy develops, it is becoming more and more like the regular fiat money economy. So, just as you may decide to sell a few things through eBay if you want to make yourself a bit of extra cash in your national fiat currency, you can also sell things over the internet for Bitcoin or for other digital currencies. See below for a list of just some of the peer to peer marketplaces that can help you do this.
Cryptothrift
Bitcoin, Litecoin, Primecoin and Feathercoin auction site with automated escrow.
CoinPost
Get Bitcoins in Exchange for your Products and Services.
Bitcoin Marketplace: Buy and Sell with Bitcoin
Hosted on Reddit: the front page of the internet.
World of TIPS
The first place on the net to spend your TIPS. Taking contributions from talented writers. We offer quick, secure payments using the with fedoracoin payment processor.
Ripli.ca
Buy and sell digital goods for Ripples (XRP).
Devtome - Write and Get Paid in Devcoins
If you are a writer like me and the other members of the community here at Hubpages, then you will find plenty of opportunities to put your talents to work earning Bitcoins. You can find writing jobs for BTC on the freelance jobs boards I mentioned above, or you can work for websites like Bitscan who are always looking for writers.
Personally, however, I think that the best opportunity to earn digital currency by writing is through Devtome. Devtome is the official wiki of the Devcoin project, which is a cryptocurrency designed to support open source developers and creative commons media producers. If you are accepted as a Devtome writer (you have to provide a sample of your work when you apply to help prevent spammers) you will earn a proportion of the newly generated Devcoins based on the word count of your published content on the site.
Film Annex - Revenue Share for Video and Blog Posts
Film Annex is a new website which shares its revenue with content creators in Bitcoin. You can earn by uploading videos to the site - they are targetting independent filmmakers with this but you can also post other types of video content, by writing blog posts to publish on the site, or by sharing content (your own or other people's) with your friends and fans on social networking websites. You must reach the minimum payment threshold of 0.2 BTC before you can request a payout.
Film Annex 'Buzz Score' Explained
Claiming Bounties
Another way to earn is through claiming bounties. A bounty is simply a reward offered to anybody who can complete a given task. Usually they are offered to open source software developers who can fix a bug in the code for a coin, develop a new service, or provide an improved piece of code for a certain function. But there are also bounties out there for various other tasks which non-programmers could have a go at. Sometimes you can arrange with the person offering the bounty to work on it in advance. but usually the bounty is simply paid to the first person to submit a successful solution.
Most coins have at least one bounty running, and you should be able to find them for each coin with a quick google search. Perhaps the widest range of bounties that could be claimed by non-programmers comes from Devcoin, which reserves some of its newly generated coins specifically for paying bounties to support open source and creative commons projects.
